I am writing a 6-minute Demonstrative speech, that I have to give tomorrow, on EV training pokemon.

This is my first rough cut. I need to start breaking it down into more simplified bullet lists from here, so I can't just read the whole speech off cards. But this is what I hope I manage to say!If you haven’t played pokemon since you were a kid, if ever, you may not be aware that it is no longer just a game for kids.

There is, for example, a hidden game mechanic that allows you to selectively strengthen your pokemon’s most important stats. The game doesn’t outright tell you that it’s there -- game creators wanted fans to communicate with one another to figure it out.

But let’s say you have. For the sake of argument, lets say you humor your 9 year old cousin, whom you babysit, and it gives you something to bond over. Pretty simple, right? It’s a kid’s game. You can do this. You even figured out how to run around in one another’s games using entranet. But theres one thing that’s just bugging you. The Kid has a Gyrados that stomps every pokemon you throw at it.

I’m going to teach you how to raise an awesome Pikachu by training its Effort Values to make your pokemon NOTICEABLY STRONGER.

First, we’re going to research and create a plan for training our Pikachu. Second, I’ll talk to you just a little about acquiring your pokemon.Then, I’ll walk you through the actual process of EV training.Finally, I’m going to give you some hints you can use to radically reduce the amount of time the actual training takes.So, as I hinted above, my goal is to enhance my pokemon’s natural strengths.

Because I’m training a Pikachu, a little research tells me speed is its strongest stat, while Attack and Special Attack are both almost as strong. I know I want to train for speed, but how do I decide which Offensive stat to train?

By looking at the moves Pikachu and its evolution family can learn, I can see that the important moves are Special Attack based and I can focus my attention there.

But why not train both? Each pokemon can only gain 510 EV points before it stops learning more. Additionally, each individual stat maxes out at 255 EV points. You can decide to distribute your points any way you like, but you may get the most benefit from picking two and focusing your attention there.

So, to optimize Pikachu’s training, We now know we need to focus on special attack and speed. The last thing we need to research is where we will go to get these EV points.Where do EV points come from?

Every time an opposing pokemon is knocked out, all pokemon involved in the battle gain a number and type of EVs correlating to the defeated pokemon.

For example: A Geodude gives me one Defense EV, a Rattata gives me one Attack EV, and if I were fighting against Pikachu’s evolution, Raichu, any of my pokemon that gained experience from the battle would also gain 3 Speed EVs.

So, to train for a specific EV, you want to go to a place where there are lots of pokemon that will give you the EV’s you are looking for. There are a number of guides on the internet that will help you figure out the best places to train each stat depending on which version you are playing.So now we have Researched the pokemon we want to train, decided which stats we want to focus on, and planned where we will go to earn our Effort Values.The next step is to actually get the pokemon you want to train.

There is a lot that can go into this step, and plenty of guides on the internet can help you capture or breed or trade for an ideal specimen of your selected species.

If this sounds interesting to you, research the variables that go into breeding pokemon and enjoy how intricate the mechanics really get under the surface.

For everyone else, let’s just pretend you now have the pokemon of your dreams and move on to the more practical aspect of training it.First, we will fully train the Special Attack stat before moving on to fully train the Speed stat. It becomes infinitely more confusing if you try to train both at once.

The research we did in step one included looking up where to go to EV train each stat, and I am starting with special attack.

Since I am playing in a 5th generation game, I know I want to go to Celestial Tower, north of Mistralton City, where I will fight Litwicks and Elgyem, which are worth 1 special attack point each.

This means that, Making sure that Pikachu is involved in every battle, I need to knock out at least 255 pokemon.

For advanced training you’ll want to keep a precise tally, but even for simplified training like this, you might still want to try to keep track, just so you know how many baby candle ghosts and little green aliens you still need to knock out. 255, 254, 253,....252... it’s alright. I can wait.

Once you’ve gotten through all 255 battles, now you get to do the same thing to train for speed!

This time, you’ll be swimming around in creeks looking for Basculin. Good news, though! These red and blue striped fish are not only great for sushi, they are worth TWO Speed EVs each, meaning you’ll only need to fight half as many.

Now that you have

done the research and planning

acquired the pokemon

and trained for so long you probably want to throttle me

I’m going to give you a quick overview of some savy tricks smart trainers use to speed up the whole process.

Use Vitamins such as Calcium, Carbos, Iron, and Zinc. You’ll get a number of them throughout gameplay, and their mechanics use EV points to work. Each one gives you 10 EV points, up to 100 per stat. So if you give Pikachu 10 Carbos before training for speed, you’ll only need 155 more points to max it out, instead of 255.

There are also items and a pokemon virus that boost the number of EVs received in battle. With both the pokerus virus and the correct Power item, Pikachu could be getting 10 EV points per battle, where it was getting only one before.

Now instead of up to 510 battles, we only need to win about 50, even without any Vitamins.Now you know the basics of EV Training! I showed you how to research and make a plan before you start, and I gave you some things to consider when actually acquiring your pokemon. I walked you through the long way to EV train, and then I told you about some tricks you could use to vastly speed it up.

Congratulations, you have now trained a pokemon that will stand a chance against your snot-nosed cousin’s unbeatable Gyrados.